Care for People Sermon Series -- Part 1

Care for People Sermon Series – Part 1

Adam T. Trambley

St. John's Episcopal Church, Sharon, PA, September 24, 2017

This week, I want to start a series of sermons looking at the second part of our purpose statement, “Care for People.”  Specifically, I want to talk about how we help people in need as individuals and a church community. Over the past year, the vestry has talked about these issues a number of times.  As we tried to discern the best way forward, some of the advice I received was to share these issues with the congregation so we can all struggle with them together.  After our vestry conversations, I spent some time this summer during my Doctor of Ministry residence reading and reflecting and talking with colleagues about some of these challenges. If you want to read more about the issues I’ll be talking about, I can suggest a number of resources.  The vestry did come up with a number of recommendations about some of what we will look at, and I will share those three weeks from now.

Photo by Matthew Ciszek

I want to start by saying two things.  First, I am very proud of this parish and its heart for outreach and the ministries we have been undertaking.  I think some of our challenges are arising because we have been doing our work well.  The food pantry and the lunches and the alms fund and West Hill and the ECW contributions and individual donations have been pretty amazing.  We have engaged people and loved them and have built relationships with them and truly want to help them.  But now that we have solved the easy problems, God is giving us bigger challenges.

Second, I want to say that I don’t have any answers here.  None of these issues will have easy technical fixes.  Whatever way we go, someone could say, “Yes, but…”  If you had asked me about some of these things over the past five years, I might have given you three different answers depending on the day.  But I do think that being more intentional about what we are doing can be helpful.  I also think there are times when all of us being on the same page and making choices together is helpful, rather than having different people trying to do different things.    

Today, I want to talk about some specific issues that have come up over the past year.  Then I’ll look at some of Biblical passages that give us guidance on caring for others.  Next week, I’ll look at issues of outreach and vocation, stewardship, and the goals we can have as we try to care for people.  In two weeks, I’ll look at different approaches to helping people, an understanding of the poverty trap, and issues that can trip up people trying to do go work.  Then during the final week, I’ll talk about some best practices in caring for people, look at a spiritual-gifts based approach, and lay out the vestry’s suggestions. 

Here are some of the issues we have been dealing with.  Many of these situations are about people coming to see “the pastor”, but they can also happen as people come to the community lunches or the food pantry or even Sunday morning services.  Over the course of a year, the parish alms fund usually gives away five or six thousand dollars to help individuals and families in need, in addition to our feeding programs and whatever moneys individual parishioners help with.  As we have engaged and welcomed the community, we have often been confronted with significant needs, or been asked for significant help.

First of all, we have on some occasions given assistance in ways that have helped transform lives or kept people afloat through a crisis.  At the same time, there have been times when everything seemed great, but I found out later we were lied to and funds were used in ways we might not have approved of.  Being taken advantage of isn’t the end of the world, but it means at the very least that we have less to help other people with.

We have also done the work of building relationships with people.  Yet at times I’ve seen parishioners pour out their hearts and sometimes their pocketbooks to help someone who then, in effect, just drops them when they stop offering money or other assistance.  Maybe this isn’t surprising, but the cost is real in terms of cynicism and burnout in those in the parish really wanting generously to care for people.

One story speaks to some of the ambiguities in helping people.  I had a brother and sister come to me, and I met with both of them over a couple of weeks.  The sister had got out of jail and the brother was needing financial help to support his sister, as well as a special needs son.  I was able to help them a bit.  Then the sister went back to jail, and the brother’s family had more medical issues that required driving back and forth to Youngstown frequently.  Needing money for gas for out of town medical appointments is a frequent theme these days.  Sometimes I could help him, and we prayed when he came, and it seemed like a positive relationship.  Then the sister got out of jail again, and I helped with a few things she needed immediately, including some health care items.  Then at some point I stopped hearing from the brother entirely.  The sister would call me every so often on her sobriety dates, sometimes asking for money, but it usually felt like she was going to ask just in case I’d give it to her, which I didn’t.  Mostly, though, she seemed really happy to have had someone support her and wanted to share her good news.  The last time she called I asked what happened to her brother, and she said he was in jail for bank robbery.  I don’t have a moral to this story.  I just want to share it to describe the kinds of situations that are coming to us fairly regularly, and how complicated they are to navigate.   

People also show up needing hundreds, or even thousands of dollars for housing or utility costs.  Sometimes I could help them, but I’m not sure that I should.  There are times I’ve felt like if we had money we should always share it, but other times I really feel like it is not the right thing to do.  People have also come to the lunches or other ministries and ask for help with housing or medication.  Sometimes we’ve tried to find creative ways to help.  Mostly though, we aren’t equipped to deal with housing or medical issues, especially not on an on-going basis.  Deciding what we can and can’t do becomes a serious issue as I have heard more and more stories from parishioners and volunteers being directly asked for money in ways that are overwhelming to them. Sometimes these requests feel manipulative, especially since I may already be working with people through the alms fund.  Finding ways to protect volunteers while helping others seems important.

Three other larger trends are also making things more difficult for us.  The first is the increasing heroin and opioid epidemic.  Addicts will use whatever means possible to get cash for a fix.  I have been told some pretty heartbreaking tales to get cash.  Of course, some people also have genuine needs, but it is hard to know.  Second, some other churches and agencies have been referring people to us.  I have had caseworkers bring people to St. John’s to talk to me so that they can get assistance from the alms fund.  Maybe this is a win, but something also feels not quite right about it.  Finally, as more and more people bank on-line, checks are not being used.  Checking fees are increasing and many people won’t take checks.  To pay a utility company, or even a landlord, I often have to have cash or a money order now.  Gas for a medical appointment require giving someone either cash or a gas card, and those can be traded like cash or used for any of the things found at Sheetz or Speedway.  These changes mean that increasingly assisting people involves either a lot of my time or else giving them cash or cash equivalent, which can be problematic.

Then we have the final dilemma that we’ll talk more about later, which is the choice between trying to make a long-term difference in people’s lives versus focusing on emergency needs.

To help us think about to how to care for people, I want to look at a number of Bible passages.

Starting at the beginning, in Genesis we read that God created humanity in his image, in the image of God he created them (Gen. 1:27).  Any discussion of how to help people effectively starts with the understanding that every single person is made in the image of God.  God formed each person for a particular purpose, and everyone has an inherent dignity.  God loves them and Jesus was willing to die for them.  We can’t just write someone off, nor can we look down on anyone.  Jesus reminds us of everyone’s value in the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14).  In that parable, the Pharisee thanks God for all his blessings, including for not being like the tax collector with all his issues and sins.  Needless to say, Jesus has no use for such haughtiness.  Everyone is welcome in God’s house and has the same value.  Yet, respecting people’s dignity also means that, to a certain degree at least, everyone gets to make their own choices, even bad ones, and that they have some responsibility for the consequences of their choices.  Respecting people means respecting their life choices, even when they are different from ours. This respect can have implications for both outreach and evangelism.

The next scripture I want to note is the Great Commandment (Mark 12:31).  Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself.  This command is important because it tells us that we have to care for people by doing unto others as we would have others do unto us because God told us to.  We don’t have the option of ignoring this command to love.  If we do not love those in need, in some capacity, we are not doing what Jesus wants us to do.  Yet, exactly how we are supposed to love is not always clear.  Loving neighbor can mean doing what people need, not what they want, and what is loving in the long term may not always feel good to us or to them in the short term.  Most people who are parents have some sense of this.  

Going hand-in-hand with the Great Commandment is the account of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25.  Jesus says that whatever we do for the least of his brothers and sisters, we do to him.  If we expect to go to heaven, then we are called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and visit the sick and those in prison.  Loving Jesus means that loving people in need has to be a component of our individual and church lives.

Lest we think we can decide on our own terms who and how to help, we have the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).  If you want to know who your neighbor is, he may be the person laying on the side of the road.  An implication here is that when someone is in crisis, we can’t just turn away.  Yet in this story there is only one person, not numerous people, at the side of the road. The Samaritan sees a true emergency.  Yet we also know that the sometimes robbers pretended to be people who were hurt on the side of the road. The Samaritan took the risk and helped anyway.  This passage, like most of scripture, should make us uncomfortable.  It calls us beyond what seems safe and rational to love dangerously and extravagantly.  We need to wrestle with Jesus’ parable and see where it leads us.

The last passage I want to look at is in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Give to anyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” (Matt 5:42).  For a long time, I took this literally as meaning that if someone asked for help, I needed to help them with something.  I have become a little more jaded lately, but still think then whenever people ask for help, even insincerely, Jesus words should be given the benefit of the doubt.  This instruction is another uncomfortable call to us.  At the same time, Jesus doesn’t say what we have to give.  We never see Jesus giving out cash to hungry people, just loaves and fish.  We also have the example of Peter and John in the Acts of the Apostles, who, when someone begged from them, said that they didn’t have any money, but they would give what they had – in the name of Jesus stand up and walk! (Acts 3:6).  We are called to give something to everyone who asks, but maybe we have some better gifts than cash.  People may not like what we offer instead, but that doesn’t mean we have to offer only what someone else demands.

I hope this provides some groundwork to discuss issues of caring for people.  Over the next three weeks we will talk more about these questions from different perspectives.  I’d also encourage you to use these sermons to spark conversations about how we can best be neighbors to those around us.